lunesque | (no subject)

I've been thinking alot about the nature of friendship lately. (Once again, as I always seem to go into these philosophic cycles of what makes friendship and why people need these bonds.) My mother said something to me, once, after Caitlyn and I ended our friendship and I feared that my friendship with Kasi was going the same way-- that she felt badly for me, but that it was harder to keep hold of friendships that mean something to you as you grow older. It's hard to make new friends, and sometimes hard to keep older ones too.

And it didn't sound fair to me, but then again, life isn't supposed to be fair. It's something we all deal with, and it isn't always right but it's there, and we have to live it. But why should friendship be so much harder to hold on to as you get older? What changes so much that people just drift away or hurt each other with an unwillingness to go past the hard times? I've always believed that adversity makes a friendship stronger--that if you're a friend, you don't abandon each other when times get rough. You stay there, you work through it, and hopefully your friendship will be that much stronger for it.

I'm a lot more open, I think, about the kind of person I am than I used to be. Or at least, I hope I am, even if people think I'm mysterious and don't know what to do with me. In nearly every friendship-ending fight that I've had, the person I'm having trouble with takes the most secret, most private parts of myself that I trusted them with and flings them back in my face; they take a savage joy in grinding salt into wounds that should have been healed.

And I think,that maybe, friendships that you make when you're younger are more resilient because you are more resilient. Things hurt, but you heal. But the longer you go on, the older you get, the harder it is to heal from those emotional wounds you get from people you care about. In some cases, they last longer, they scar deeper, and when it comes to taking a chance of getting back that relationship v. the pain that you'd have to endure to get there... it's emotionally safer to just say good bye, even if you're haunted by them for weeks or years afterward. Where losing something you care about is better than holding on.

Or maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about. That happens alot...

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you know, until the thing with james i believed the same as you- that people could work through any hardship if the bonds of friendship were strong enough. if they loved one another enough.

but until then i'd never felt completely broken by a person before. i had rejected people i cared about, been betrayed by or let down, but never on so fundamental a level.

so there was that. and there is no fixing something like that. there is only moving on, and maybe creating something new. but, in the case of james and myself, there will be no something new. because when i finally called him he never answered. and this despite that he said he would.

the funny thing with james was that he only rubbed salt once, and that was into his own wounds. his pain was greater than mine, i guess i'm supposed to think.

because it's never just about your (my) losses and your (our) pain. it's about them too, and sometimes they do not take the hand you have stretched out to them. and who knows? maybe it's because they can't even see you anymore. or won't.

i don't know either. but i do know now that people can break, like you, like me. but i also know that we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and go on living. continue believing in people and giving others a chance.

because i don't believe that's a hard rule- that people, as they get older, stop making close friends. i've seen enough exceptions to not believe that. i think that even if that was the case before it is no longer that way now. i think that people can find meaningful relationships wherever they are. it just depends on whether those relationships are welcome.

yeah. i don't know either.

but sometimes losing someone... letting go of them is better because the bonds that held you together were rotting at their core. sometimes it's better to cut off a relationship freshly and honestly than to let it devolve into... nothing. or, worse than nothing, hatred.

but it's 1am now and i'm far beyond babbling.

i guess i just think that the most important thing for a person to do in a situation like this is not to lose faith in general, when one has lost faith in a single person.

you know?

Yeah, I know. I guess I'm just trying to sort out why what my mother said has bothered me for so long, trying to find a reason why it might be true or false. That maybe, it's a little of both without either extreme.

And I thought you'd end up being like, the only one to respond to this entry. <3333333

well, she could be right, in general. but that doesn't mean you can't prove her wrong.

there are no hard rules of friendship or love that one must follow.

heh. i'm unsurprised, too.

*thumbs nose at the rest of the audience*